Russia has never flown bomber patrols over Gulf of Mexico before,
US official claims
Published November 13, 2014

Russia’s decision to send long-range strategic bombers on regular patrol missions across the Gulf of Mexico is unprecedented, a senior U.S. military official said Wednesday, claiming that the country has never done so before – even during the Cold War.

The official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to discuss the flights publicly, also said that the pace of Russian flights around North America, including the Arctic, have largely remained steady, with about five incidents per year.

Long-range bombers have been in the area before, but only to participate in various visits to the region when the aircraft stopped over night at locations in South or Central America. During the Cold War, other types of Russian aircraft flew patrols there, including surveillance flights and anti-submarine aircraft.

Col. Steve Warren, a Pentagon spokesman, declined to call this a Russian provocation.

Now, I’d like you to think real hard, which President closed the Vieques naval gunnery range, along with the Roosevelt Roads naval base and air station at the Eastern end of Puerto Rico? This was the air station once used as a base for Navy submarine patrol aircraft cruising the Caribbean. What was the name of this President’s advisor who ran around Washington in the summer of 2001 (pre-9/11 of course) stamping out pockets of GOP support for keeping the range and base open? Hmmm? Oh, and one more thing, have a bite of this tasty tidbit:

Other factors may have come into play. Later this year Rosewood Hotels & Resorts of Dallas plans to open a luxury resort on Vieques. The company, which last year gave $100,000 in soft money to the Republican National Committee, is half-owned by Caroline Rose Hunt, whose half brother was Bush’s Texas Finance chairman. According to one source intimately familiar with the Vieques dispute, the Navy’s bombing “had raised concerns” about development plans on the island. But a Rosewood spokeswoman insisted that the company had not spoken to anyone in the administration about the project.

Of course not.

We now have the Chinese operating the Panama Canal (admittedly starting on Clinton’s watch), the Russians planning on taking over our Caribbean air patrols, and who-knows-who pouring in over the Southern border of the U.S. One might even get the impression there’s a slo-mo invasion going on. Well, maybe not quite so slo-mo.

Yeah, the Cold War is over all right – NOT!

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If you were stranded on an island in the middle of the Pacific with a couple of tons of gold bars, would you be wealthy? Would you feel wealthy? Having a shortwave (solar powered, of course) might make for a more affirmative answer to the question, but the ability to communicate would then be more fundamental to your wealth than the gold.

I started doing thought experiments such as this while contemplating the question: “What is Wealth”? Gargantuan trade deficits claimed by economic pundits to be of little or no consequence to Americans, Bush II era fiscal folly, and the abandonment of U.S. manufacturing by multinational corporations led me on this esoteric pursuit in search of an answer.

The United Nations definition of inclusive wealth is a monetary measure which includes the sum of natural, human and physical assets. Natural capital includes land, forests, fossil fuels, and minerals. Human capital is the population’s education and skills. Physical (or “manufactured”) capital includes such things as machinery, buildings, and infrastructure.

Now, that’s not so complicated, is it? Things get complicated because most persons, whether intentionally or mistakenly, conflate personal and national wealth. Bank balances, income, and the market value of one’s assets are how we gauge personal wealth. However, that is not national wealth, the pie we divide up with our monetary accounting, money merely being a claim against those national assets.

Today’s economic travails seem primarily a result of confusing national wealth with personal wealth. What’s good for the personal goose is not necessarily good for the national gander. Nor vice versa. Asset prices are not “wealth”; the stock market could drop 50% tomorrow and our current capacity to produce goods and provide services would essentially be unaffected.

What’s been done to the United Sates over the past fifty years or so, longer if you wish to quibble, is that we have dissipated or stunted our national wealth through a number of mechanisms. We’ve let our natural resources lie fallow through excessive environmental regulation. Infrastructure is left to crumble. Consumption is financed through debt rather than income. Multinationals have invested in productive and research capacity overseas rather than domestically. We’ve given away, sold, or permitted much of our commercial and military technology to be stolen. Our educational institutions have been corrupted and stunted at all levels with political correctness and a repudiation of Western history. Culturally we have, as the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan so eloquently put it, defined decency down.

Wealth can be created. However, doing so takes time. It is a laborious and intensive process. Financial markets do not create wealth. They merely move it around through redistribution or inflation. But they do it quickly. That is the attraction.

You can hear “Iraq” mentioned more than once. This is ISIS (Islamic State of Iraq and Syria) doin’ their thang in Iraq. Pretty rough stuff. Not for the faint of heart. Post-modern version of the ‘Adventures of Mohammed’?

Robert Spencer: We Have Met the Enemy and He Is Us
June 26, 2014 by Frontpagemag.com

Editor’s note: Below are the video and transcript to Robert Spencer’s address at the Freedom Center’s 2014 Texas Weekend. The event took place May 2nd-4th at the Gaylord Texan Resort and Convention Center in Grapevine, Texas.

41m48s including Q&A

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The following is courtesy of Brigadier Rudy and the Super Sabre Society’s “Toss Bomb” newsletter. [Super Sabre = North American F-100] Perhaps those liberated appreciate the sacrifices of Americans in WW II a bit more than we do.

About six miles from Maastricht, in the Netherlands, lie buried 8,301 American soldiers who died in “Operation Market Garden” in the battles to liberate Holland in the fall-winter of 1944-45. Every one of the men buried in the cemetery, as well as those in the Canadian and British military cemeteries, has been adopted by a Dutch family who mind the grave, decorate it, and keep alive the memory of the soldier they have adopted. It is even the custom to keep a portrait of “their” American soldier in a place of honor in their home. Annually, on “Liberation Day,” memorial services are held for “the men who died to liberate Holland.” The day concludes with a concert. The final piece is always “Il Silenzio,” a memorial piece commissioned by the Dutch and first played in 1965 on the 20th anniversary of Holland’s liberation. It has been the concluding piece of the memorial concert ever since.

In 2008 the soloist was a 13-year-old Dutch girl, Melissa Venema, backed by André Rieu and his orchestra (the Royal Orchestra of the Netherlands). This beautiful concert piece is based upon the original version of taps and was written by Italian composer Nino Rossi.

Military service changes a person in deep and lasting ways that are often bittersweet. Those who serve honorably carry with them the satisfaction of having done their duty even amid the pain of a lasting injury or the loss of comrades in arms. Perhaps only those who have served or lost a loved one can fully appreciate the significance of Memorial Day. And if we are to honor those who gave their last, full measure, we must also honor and value the ideals that are inseparable from their sacrifice. Otherwise, our tribute is hypocrisy.

A couple of years ago a classmate of mine was taken aback by what I said about two friends who had died in their early fifties in the ’90s. I commented that I considered the two men fortunate in at least one sense: they had not lived to witness the current advanced stage of America’s social and politically-correct disintegration. Should the same be said of our honored war dead? How is it that as a country we still hold true to their ideals when President Obama issues proclamations designating June “Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Pride Month”? Is this the post-modern replacement for “God, Country and Family”?

I doubt that those we honor this Memorial Day would be very pleased with what our country has and is becoming. Mourn both them and the America we’ve lost.

This past Thursday Walt Disney World dropped a Florida Boy Scouts council as a recognized charity for its employees. Henceforth, there will no Disney contributions to that BSA council in an employee’s name. And the reason?

The corporate giant — whose Orlando park is a major destination for “Gay Day” events in early June — will also no longer offer the council or its units grant funding, apparently a signal that the BSA decision, by keeping the adult ban, did not go far enough.

[snip]

The company is a top-ranked gay-friendly employer, according to the Human Rights Campaign, and in 2013, openly gay executive George Kalogridis was announced as president of Walt Disney World.

News of the policy change appeared on websites, including Scouts for Equality, an advocacy group started by Eagle Scout Zach Wahls to get the BSA to change their previous restrictive membership policies on gays.

I’m not a very relious person, more like agnostic-Lite, and I’m not in the habit of quoting scripture, but it seems that Mr. Kalogridis is at serious risk of running afoul of the following admonition:

And whoever shall offend one of these little ones that believe in me,
it is better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck,
and he were cast into the sea.–Matthew 18:6,10

French essayist Julien Benda once penned the following:

Humanity did evil for two thousand years, but honored good.
This contradiction was an honor to the human species,
and formed the rift whereby civilization slipped into the world.–Julien Benda, Treason of the Intellectuals, 1927

What Benda is describing applies only to Western Civilization as being formed by this rift. And if it is closing, Islam — whether or not one can call Islam a “civilization” — and the Chinese aren’t about to be swallowed by that closing. Only us.

In 1992 Roger Kimball wrote a stunning essay about the writings of Messrs. Benda and Finkielkraut with the following heading:

When hatred of culture becomes itself a part of culture,
the life of the mind loses all meaning.—Alain Finkielkraut,The Undoing of Thought

Today we are trying to spread knowledge everywhere.
Who knows if in centuries to come there will not be universities
for re-establishing our former ignorance?—Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799)

Today we do know. At least when peering into the ivy corridors of philosophy and ethics, that is.

Whereby we came to this exaggerated public acceptance of homosexuality as an alternative “life-style”, whether or not it be the result of tangled DNA, was much of a mystery to me until I read Dr. Judith Reisman’s law review article, “Crafting Bi/Homosexual Youth”, introduced by this quotation:

The press can both stimulate public opinion and miseducate it . . .
The press has become the greatest power within the Western countries, more powerful than the legislature, the executive, and judiciary. One would then like to ask: By what law has it been elected and to whom is it responsible.–Aleksander Solzhenitsyn, Harvard University Commencement, 1978

But there’s nothing better than being “top-ranked” when you’re also considered “gay-friendly” by the press, is there? Disney boycott, anyone? Fat chance.

One lesson I’ve learned from my past fifteen years scouring the internet is that the “TRUTH” doesn’t seek you out and simply show up in your email in-box. I’ve had people get totally pissed at me because I burst a bubble or two of theirs found bobbing upon the cybersea with the other flotsam. And it’s also why I don’t pay much heed to most of the undocumented stuff that washes in over my internet transom – unless I can independently verify it from sources more substantive than relatively obscure web sites or the mainstream media.

After having gone through this process on a multitude of occasions, I’m convinced that most of the emails floating around the internet that seem conservative and are also erroneous, if not flat out false, are the work of progressives/leftists or even RINOs, and are designed to confuse readers, i.e., you and me, by telling us what we wish to hear or believe. Deception and misdirection have always been the hallmark of Communists, fascists and all tyrannical forms of politics. Consider this excerpt from a recent posting by Michael Ledeen:

The Desert of Mirrors: Who’s Really Who in the Middle East?
Posted By Michael Ledeen
On February 2, 2014 @ 10:401

[snip]

I don’t know the answer (although I think that the keys to unlocking the mystery are probably in the Iranian and/or Russian archives), but it reminds me of one of the greatest of all grand deceptions, the Soviet-created “Trust” just after the Revolution. That was organized by the Soviet intelligence service, which created a phony opposition movement whose “leaders” contacted Western governments with offers to topple the Bolshevik regime. The “Trust” leaders provided the Western strategists with secret documents, and even assassinated Soviet officials in order to establish the bona fides of the Trust. The West bought the deception, and funded the Trust, giving the Soviets money, knowledge of Western plans, and the ability to manipulate Western anti-Soviet operations. The Trust’s most celebrated victim was the British official “Reilly Ace of Spies,” who was lured to a meeting, arrested, tortured, and executed.

So, that’s how it’s done. And the Communists/Marxists/leftists/progressives, as well as fascists and other forms of tyranny, including Islamists, have been at it ever since the dawn of politics. So, why not American political movements? Left or right? And why not on the Internet?

When a person or organization in the public eye gets too close to spotlighting the truth, you can be certain the establishment will strike back. Consider what was done to Sarah Palin and what is being done to the Tea Party by both leftists and the likes of Fearless Talking Head Karl Rove. Below the radar of public scrutiny there seems to lay an army of anonymous writers pumping out deceptive, misleading and self-replicating infobots sent out en mass to confuse the ranks of conservatives and others holding traditional American values.

Yes, the truth will make you free. But getting at it is only one problem. Not swallowing artificial bait is another.

Ciao,
Dennis

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It’s a crummy lesson, alas crummy police officers keep teaching it. Circulating around social networks this week–the first person account was written by a friend of a friend of mine–is this grim (and long) tale from Medium.com.

It’s about how when Peretz Partensky called 911 when he stumbled across an injured biker on a San Francisco street, it led to him being shoved, tackled, kneed in the temple, having an existing elbow injury exacerbated, cuffed face down on the street, his hands stomped on, arrested, told he “was going to be a problem,” denied medical attention, stripped and shoved into solitary confinement, then let out the next day. When he went to court he had his charges summarily dismissed.

Police Shoot, Kill 80-Year-Old Man In His Own Bed,
Don’t Find the Drugs They Were Looking For
Zach Weissmueller
February 13, 2014

In the early morning hours of June 27, 2013, a team of Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department deputies pulled up to the home of Eugene Mallory, an 80-year-old retired engineer living in the rural outskirts of Los Angeles county with his wife Tonya Pate and stepson Adrian Lamos.

SACRAMENTO — One of last year’s heartbreaking stories involved 13-year-old Andy Lopez, who was shot to death by a Sonoma County deputy sheriff in October after the deputy spotted him carrying a realistic-looking pellet gun. Deputy Erick Gelhaus said he called on Lopez to drop the gun, and shot him seven times as the boy turned toward the officer with the barrel of the gun rising.

The shooting continues to spark discussions about the proper use of force by police officers — especially after Lopez’s parents filed a lawsuit alleging that county officials “were long aware of the propensity of defendant Gelhaus to recklessly draw his firearm and to use excessive force.”

Kathryn Johnston: A Year Later
92-year-old woman’s death has done little to curb
the use of paramilitary police tactics around the country.
Radley Balko
November 23, 2007

It was one year ago this week that narcotics officers in Atlanta, Georgia broke into the home of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston.

They had earlier arrested a man with a long rap sheet on drug charges. That man told the police officers that they’d find a large stash of cocaine in Johnston’s home. When police forced their way into Johnston’s home, she met them holding a rusty old revolver, fearing she was about to be robbed. The police opened fire, and killed her.

Shortly after the shooting, the police alleged that they had paid an informant to buy drugs from Ms. Johnston’s home. They said she fired at them first, and wounded two officers. And they alleged they found marijuana in her home.

We now know that these were all lies. In fact, everything about the Kathryn Johnston murder was corrupt. The initial arrest of the ex-con came via trumped-up charges. The police then invented an informant for the search warrant, and lied about overseeing a drug buy from Johnston’s home.

Where were you on 9/11 when you first learned of the terrorist attack? Like the Kennedy assassination and the Challenger explosion most Americans old enough to have witnessed these events have them permanently seared into their memories. I was watching the north WTC tower smoke-‘n’-burn on CNBC when the second plane came in to strike the south edifice. At that moment I realized how childish my view of the world was. Idealism waned. Confidence in my opinions essentially evaporated along with the Twin Towers. ‘Twas time for major reprogramming and reeducation.

Fortunately, the internet now made possible access to a seemingly infinite range of information resources that I could use in my quest for the “Truth.” Unfortunately, I soon realized how not-so-full-spectrum political journalism obfuscates more than it illuminates. However, my quest began to gain traction when early on I discovered the work of Steve Emerson and David Horowitz. My confidence in the integrity and enlightening insight of these two individuals has been consistently reaffirmed over the intervening years, a primary reason being that these men were calling spades, spades long before the twin towers came a tumblin’ down.

Mr. Emerson is the producer of the 1994 PBS documentary “Jihad in America.” In testimony given prior the millennium changeover and before both houses of Congress, he details the names of individuals and organizations engaged in the Islamic subversion of the United States. Surprisingly, many of those names appeared again when Bush II reached out to reassure Muslim Americans that they were not to be held accountable for the actions of a few Islamic radicals.

This was my first indication that the GOP, in general, and the Presidents Bush in particular, did not fit my concept of patriotic, America-first Republicans. Since then, this view has been reinforced many times over to the point that I now see the establishment GOP as essentially progressive-Lite. Certainly not even “middle of the bird” as comedian Pat Paulsen once described political moderates. But it was through Steve Emerson that I was first set upon them.

David Horowitz is a self-confessed red-diaper baby and ex-Communist whom I also happened upon shortly after 9/11. His writings revealed to me for the first time President Clinton’s treasonous give-aways to the Chinese, Hillary’s anti-military White House shenanigans, and the Democratic Party’s coddling of openly Marxist Congressmen. And, as with Mr. Emerson, my trust in what Horowitz says has been frequently reinforced. What he wrote before 9/11 has proven most helpful when evaluating the works of Obama, his administration, and his Congressional cronies of both parties.

Emerson and Horowitz are among several writers I’ve followed whose insightfulness has been confirmed by subsequent events. Their perspicacity is not simple happenstance, but rather the result of deep, personal experience and not-so-wishful thinking – which brings me to my friend Heinz.

Heinz was born in 1934 in what would later become East Germany. During WW II, a bomb dropped by Allied aircraft left a large crater very near his house. He was shot at by German troops while tossing a few chunks of warmth-giving coal from a train loaded with the stuff. These were only a couple of his wartime (mis)adventures.

Post-war didn’t prove much better, what with his having ended up on the east side of the Iron Curtain. In 1955, having told only his mother, father and the brother who was going with him, Heinz headed for West Berlin. With only the clothes on his back, he walked to freedom through Checkpoint Charlie into the American Sector. From there he made his way to the United States in 1958 and his future career as an electrician working in Detroit’s auto industry.

Heinz is retired now. Both he and his wife collect their social security and pensions. They live quite comfortably, though his wartime experiences have left Heinz unable to watch an air show with its diving planes, and now finds barley inedible since he ate far too much of it during the war.

He has no plans to move outside the U.S. But, like George Mason U. Prof. Walter Williams, Heinz thinks that young persons might seriously consider emigrating. This isn’t the America he fled to. What he thought he had left behind has reared its ugly head right here in the U.S. During a recent conversation Heinz shook his head while commenting on the current political atmosphere in the United States, “… and the people here say they can’t understand how Hitler came to power?”

So, who would you prefer to believe? The talking heads on television? Those who extol the infinite virtues of socialism? Celebrities and LGBT aficionados? Michael Moore? Oprah? Karl Rove?

Or should you more seriously consider the insight of a man who has lived under heel of both the Nazis and the Communists?